Do You Really Not Like Hillary Clinton, or Are You Just Sexist?

Young voters think she's "dishonest," but that's an old criticism with gendered origins.

By
Prachi Gupta

Jan 28, 2016

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On Monday night, a bold 22-year-old from Iowa asked presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton a very awkward, but good, question during CNN's televised Democratic Town Hall. "It feels like there's a lot of young people like myself who are very passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders, and I just don't see the same enthusiasm from younger people for you," Taylor Gipple said. "In fact, I've heard from a lot of people my age that you're dishonest. But I'd like to hear from you why you feel the enthusiasm isn't there."

Gipple is right that many young voters are critical of Clinton. A recent ABC News/Washington Postpoll found that slightly more than half of adults find Clinton dishonest or not trustworthy. Days ahead of the Iowa caucus, she isneck-and-neck with her opponent Bernie Sanders and it's in large part due to his appeal among younger people. According to a Des Moines Register poll, he's ahead by more than 2 to 1 among Iowans under 45, and among liberal voters who will be attending their first caucus in 2016, he leads Clinton by almost 20 percentage points. A Quinnipiac poll puts Sanders ahead of Clinton in Iowa, and a strong lead in New Hampshire. If Clinton loses these states, she may very well lose the presidential primary.

The appeal of Sanders, a Democratic socialist, to young people is not rocket science. He is so anti-corporate greed that he's refused funding from billionaires, risking his presidential bid on grassroots efforts. He has placed income inequality, criminal justice reform, and climate change at the forefront of his campaign, and wants to break up big banks and make Wall Street subsidize college tuition. He's boisterous and cantankerous and speaks his mind.

Clinton, meanwhile, has a net worth of $25 million, compared to Sanders' $500,000. She has long been criticized for sounding scripted and robotic, the exact opposite of the animated Sanders. Many young people see her as maintaining, or in line with, the so-called establishment. Sanders promises, if not an overhaul, at least something different. Here's how one 21-year-old Harvard student described the appeal of Sanders versus Clinton in an article in the Guardian:

"Hillary, can you excite us?" asks Osaremen Okolo, a 21-year-old African-American who supports Clinton but "misses feeling fired up" as she was for Barack Obama and as some of her friends feel about Sanders."Young people like Bernie because he sounds like a revolutionary," she says. But Okolo prefers Clinton's experience and positions on issues like equal pay for equal work and criminal justice reform. "Hillary sounds pragmatic, which can come across as stuffy to young people. Her experience can almost count against her." She adds: "Sanders seems bold, even if none of his ideas can happen."

If we're talking about political revolutions, however, voting a woman into office is pretty damn historic — especially a woman who has been an outspoken advocate for women's rights long before feminism was en vogue. In 1995, then-first lady Clinton declared "women's rights are human rights" at the groundbreaking UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and she redefined the role of a first lady from White House hostess to co-president, becoming one of Bill Clinton's biggest strategic assets throughout his presidency. She served as a senator and later as secretary of state under President Obama. Almost no other politician in America — male or female — has a better résumé for the role of commander-in-chief. In her 2016 campaign, she has put women at the front and center, fighting for paid leave, equal pay, Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights, and against campus sexual assault. (Sanders, meanwhile, called Planned Parenthood an "establishment organization," a bizarre assessment considering that the women's health organization makes family planning available to millions of low-income women and has been the target of frequent legislative attacks by anti-abortion Republicans who want to defund it.)

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The criticism Gipple waged against Clinton — that she is "dishonest" — is not new. Though perhaps spurred by the email scandal or by accusations that she enabled and obscured Bill Clinton's womanizing, it's is an old one that took roots more than 20 years ago, when Clinton was jockeying for power in a man's political sphere. Former Clinton campaign worker and friend Susan Thomases told the New York Times that, as a first lady, Clinton "was so strong a personality that there were people who felt that when [Hillary and Bill] were together her strong personality made him seem weaker." Publicly, she dealt with sexist attacks from the media that criticized her as "shrill" and "bitchy," and compared her to a nagging mother. She was simultaneously not tough enough and yet too tough. She was too feminine and yet not feminine enough. She was a woman with ambition and therefore could not be trusted. In 2006, the Onion parodied the double standard against Clinton in a piece called, "Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious to be the First Female President." In her 2008 campaign for president, a male advisor told her to tone down her feminism because it would alienate voters. Even the criticism from Democrats who supported Obama, whose White House remained a boys' club, took on an overly harsh, sexist tone.

After years of navigating political land mines as a woman, one wonders : How could an ambitious woman rise in politics, if not with dogged persistence and guardedness that Clinton has demonstrated? That's why the criticisms wielded against Clinton from the younger generation right now seem unfair and yes, even sexist. As Lena Dunham, who is campaigning for Clinton, told Jill Abramson in the Guardian, "It feels so gendered, even from women, so harshly sexist. We never throw claims of too establishment or too stiff or even too selfish at male politicians. It's unfair in the deepest sense."

Clinton hinted at some of her gender-specific hardships in her response to Gipple. "I've been around a long time. People have thrown a lot of things at me. And you know, I can't keep up with it ... I just keep going forward, because there's nothing to it. I'm still standing," she said.

It's easy to like Sanders, who has rendered apt comparisons to comedian Larry David, and who has come into the race with lots of gusto and idealism and a strong grasp on income inequality. But when evaluating candidates, it should not be forgotten that Clinton has had to play within a far stricter set of standards simply to participate in the same game that Sanders is playing so well right now. It may explain, in part, why she has developed a reputation for being scripted and even dishonest, and it may also explain why she is not willing to take as many risks with her campaign. Her avowal of feminism may not seem so revolutionary in an era where "FEMINIST" blazes behind Beyoncé performing at the VMAs, but let's not forget that it is, in no small part, thanks to Clinton, that young people today can imagine a woman in the White House. We may be used to Clinton, but that doesn't mean that her presidency would not be revolutionary for America.